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Good morning.
A tip of the hat to Walmart, which has been dethroned from the top of the Fortune 500 after an impressive 13-year run. Fortune magazine, which compiles the annual list of US companies ranked by total revenue, announced Wednesday that Amazon is the new No. 1, powered by $717 billion in sales in its latest fiscal year, a 12% year-over-year jump.
With its $713 million in revenue, Walmart easily outpaced third-place UnitedHealth Group ($447 billion) and fourth-place Apple ($416 billion). On the other hand, if you measure by annual profit, fifth-place Alphabet, which made $402 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year, ascends to the top of the ladder. The Google owner raked in a record $132 billion in profits in its most recent fiscal year, while Amazon placed fifth with $77 billion on the most profitable list, and Walmart was all the way at 14th with $22 billion. There are worse consolation prizes.
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It’s a miracle on 34th Street, subsidized by luxury shoppers and Warren Buffett’s checkbook.
The 168-year-old Macy’s shared spring-quarter earnings yesterday that beat analysts’ expectations. Looking at same-store sales, Macy’s notched its strongest first quarter in four years and its fourth straight quarter of gains. Profits jumped to $63 million from $38 million a year ago.
All that springtime success led the retailer to up its guidance for the year, anticipating that its CEO’s turnaround plan would continue to refresh its once-musty wardrobe.
Business Is Bloomin’
Macy’s slogged through 12 straight quarters of same-store sales declines leading up to mid-2025. But CEO Tony Spring had been prepping the retailer for a comeback since taking the helm the year before. Then, in September of last year, Macy’s showed its first glimmers of growth with rising same-store sales.
Spring, who took over Macy’s after spending nearly four decades climbing the ranks at Bloomingdale’s, laid out a plan to close 150 underperforming Macy’s locations, which is nearly 80% complete. At the same time, the company has prioritized its digital sales, recently adding an AI-powered chatbot to its site.
But Spring’s roadmap not only culls Macy’s weaknesses but also flexes its strengths, one of which Spring is well aware of:
- Bloomingdale’s is leading the wider turnaround at Macy’s, notching a 10% same-store sales jump in the most recent quarter while hitting a sales-volume record (same-store sales at the main Macy’s brand rose ~2%). The high-end store has been on a spree for several quarters and is probably starting to see a boost from the bankruptcy of rival Saks Global. The retailer has hung “Everything Must Go” signs on more than half of its Saks Fifth Avenue stores, sending Ferragamo-seeking shoppers to Bloomingdale’s.
- Macy’s has leaned into its success selling higher-end items by adding more brands, such as Chloe and Miu Miu, to shelves across all three of its businesses. Macy’s-owned makeup store Bluemercury also outpaced its parent with same-store sales gains of more than 6%.
  Trading Up: Macy’s stands out from its department-store peers. Kohl’s is also trying to make a comeback happen, and while its sales declines narrowed in the most recent quarter, they’re still declines. JCPenney has fared worse trying to turn its fortunes around, posting steeper losses in the fourth quarter. Macy’s, meanwhile, has won support from a key influencer: Berkshire Hathaway recently bought 3 million shares — a small purchase that may have been made by Chairman and former CEO Buffett, who in March said, “Got one tiny purchase.” Macy’s faces the same harsh economic environment as its rivals, but Spring’s focus on catering to the upper end of the K-shaped economy could keep its future out of the bargain bin.
Written by Jamie Wilde
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Photo via Aspiriant
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Every long bull run produces the same balance-sheet problem. The equity grant that built the wealth is now too risky to hold and too taxed to sell.
The choice usually comes down to selling now or holding and selling later. Both end at the IRS.
Aspiriant’s latest insight walks through a third option. Tax-aware long-short strategies, run by managers like AQR and Quantinno, harvest losses whether markets rise or fall. Those losses may offset gains as the concentrated position gets trimmed.
The insight covers how the mechanism actually works, where the $1M minimums sit, why 1099 reporting can feel easier than a K-1, and how it pairs with PVFs and exchange funds inside a broader plan.
Sometimes sophisticated investing is less about chasing returns and more about managing capital gains.
Read Aspiriant’s take.
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This year, the alternative assets sector has its very own Groundhog Day. It goes like this: Investors request to withdraw a significant amount of their money from a private market fund, the fund manager announces redemptions are being capped, and equities across the sector sink deeper than Punxsutawney Phil’s underground burrow.
Driven by investor anxiety over loan valuations and exposure to AI disruption in the software industry, it has happened with private credit funds including Blue Owl, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock. It happened again Tuesday at Cliffwater, which restricted withdrawals from its $31 billion flagship private credit fund to 5% of outstanding shares, after investors requested 17%. And, in a new development Wednesday, the exodus spread to private equity. Switzerland’s Partners Group limited withdrawals to 5% at its $8.6 billion flagship private equity fund after second-quarter redemption requests reached nearly 10%.
Dialing Private Numbers
Private credit involves investing in loans, typically considered too risky or complex for traditional banks, made by non-bank financial institutions. Private equity, on the other hand, involves investing in stakes in nonpublic companies.
Funds on both sides have considerable overlap, particularly as private credit has frequently loaned to private equity-backed companies. But, until Wednesday, only private credit funds had been hit by this year’s exodus.
The reason that Partners Group’s buyout-focused Global Value Sicav fund, which has investments in hundreds of companies, was hit may say more about the uniqueness of Partners than it does about private equity in general:
- Institutional investors, who come with the intention of locking up their money for years, make up the bulk of private equity investors. However, Partners Group courts high-net-worth individuals, who account for roughly 20% of its money.
- That means, among peers, Partners has greater exposure to individual investors, who are more inclined to shake up their portfolios.
In any case, markets didn’t take the latest sign of investor discontent with private markets lightly. Partners’ Zurich-listed shares fell 16% on Thursday, Swedish private equity giant EQT AB fell 6.5% in Stockholm, and the Amsterdam-listed shares of Jersey-based CVC Capital Partners fell 7.5%.
Playing Defense: A Blackstone analysis in March argued that the $1.8 trillion private credit sector isn’t large enough to pose systemic risk, while the group’s President Jon Gray and one of Goldman Sachs’ private credit chiefs have both noted fund redemption caps are a feature, not a bug, designed to protect investors from fire sales. Morningstar researchers also recently found underwriting standards in the private credit sector “have remained disciplined.”
Written by Sean Craig
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Photo via Betterment
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Being the first link in the supply chain has its benefits.
So it’s no surprise that ASML became Europe’s most valuable company ever on Wednesday, surpassing a record previously held by Novo Nordisk.
Lith or Lithout You
In case anyone needs an AI supply chain refresher, ASML holds a virtual monopoly on the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines used by TSMC and other chip fabs to make the semiconductors (often designed by Nvidia) that AI firms like OpenAI and Anthropic use to train and run their models. Being at the starting line of the great AI race has carried ASML’s share price nearly 50% higher so far this year. But that actually underperforms major peers (the sector-tracking Invesco PHLX Semiconductor ETF, for instance, has gained 95%), and its $668 billion market cap, while the largest ever in Europe, is short of the trillion-dollar threshold that’s practically ho-hum for top players downstream in the supply chain.
However, analysts at both JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley published quite similar notes on Wednesday, arguing the stock still has plenty of room to grow, sparking the rally that minted the new record:
- Analysts at both banks argued that it is likely easier (and cheaper) than anticipated for ASML to increase production capacity to meet high demand in the coming years; both notes projected ASML could ship as many as 90 EUV machines in 2027, up from the 80 machines that the company recently projected.
- Subsequently, analysts at both banks raised their price targets for ASML shares. The endorsements come just weeks after a similar action by UBS analysts, who named the stock a “top pick.”
Head Start: Whether ASML can maintain its monopoly status is a hotly debated question. Huawei, for instance, has recently begun touting a possible workaround to ASML’s equipment; the Peter Thiel-backed San Francisco-based startup Substrate has raised $100 million to try to crack the lithography code and Nikon recently burst into the market with a lower-end product. When asked about potential competitors by TechCrunch last month, ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet said he didn’t see his company’s considerable moat drying up soon: “Wanting to have it and having it — that’s still a huge difference … When you start from scratch, the challenge is enormous.”
Written by Brian Boyle
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- In Short Supply: Tesla expanded the geographic area of its unsupervised robotaxi service to the entire Austin metro area, but still has a tiny fleet of just 20 vehicles in the Texas capital.
- On Trial: A former UBS private credit fund is accusing Pillsbury Winthrop in a lawsuit of defrauding it of $145 million by producing fake financial records for climate-finance startup Aspiration.
- Compound Interest: A new podcast from Semafor Business featuring the operators, experts & innovators behind the world’s most consequential companies. In the latest episode, Anthony Pompliano discusses his AI CFO product, investor advantages and crypto’s remaining value. Watch now.**
**Partner
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